Pay Per Click

Marketing Segmentation And The Pay Per Click Dream

As a wedding planner, if you were trying to reach potential clients in the "old days" then you might purchase an ad in one of those magazines that would-be brides pick up at WH Smith’s. These magazines were rather generic and were likely to be purchased by people who were looking for some inspiration and ideas, maybe. There were all kinds of different articles and features therein and a wide variety of ads placed in different categories in the "classifieds." Your results might vary. After all, if your particular niche was involved in selling planning packages to couples who wanted to get married on the beach in a tropical location somewhere, then this was only a small segment of the people who might elect to buy the magazine and potentially see your ad.

Isn't it great how times have changed in the field of marketing?

Now, we are able to be much more selective when we try and reach our target audience by engaging in a keyword associated form of marketing, known as pay per click. You may be familiar with PPC. If you look at a typical search engine results page – and who doesn't these days – you will see a row of ads to the right-hand side of the organic listings that dominate the page. All of those ads are placed there by organisations who are trying to get very highly targeted potential customers to buy their products or services. The beauty of PPC is that it has an almost instantaneous return on your investment. You can establish a campaign today and have people clicking through to your website before the day is out. You pay only when somebody clicks and not to display the ad itself.

Specifically target your potential customers with PPC advertising

By carefully setting up an account and an individual campaign, the wedding planner can target those who are looking for a ceremony at a beach location in a tropical isle and bypass all of those who are looking for other styles of wedding altogether. Whilst you can never guarantee that no one will click on your ad just out of latent curiosity, the more targeted you are with the establishment of your campaign, the more qualified leads that you’re going to get.

PPC is an established part of Internet marketing and is essentially the way that the major search engines such as Google earn the vast majority of their revenues

Each ad is keyword related and there will be a cost per click to pay. The cost of each individual keyword is determined by a bidding system, depending on the number of competitors who are also looking to "score" leads from that keyword. There is quite a complex means of regulating this bidding system and the amount that you pay will, in the end, depends on the quality of your advert and the quality of the page that you’re linking to.

For many organisations this is an exciting new marketing tool. However, note that competition can be quite fierce and the costs per keyword have risen by as much as 35% in the last year in certain markets. This is why it's important to engage an agency that fully understands the intricacies of this approach and will help you to establish your PPC campaign correctly.